Music festival signs up with Fringe Big Four

Organisers of the major music strand at the Fringe are joining forces with the four main venue operators to promote all their shows under a single banner.

DF Concerts has agreed to plough resources into the joint programme published by Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly over the past three years.

The music promoter, which also organises T in the Park, says the move should help generate new and younger audiences for the Fringe, while helping to persuade people buying tickets for one type of show to try something different.

The move to bring in DF Concerts comes in the wake of controversy over the four promoters claiming they were running the "Edinburgh Comedy Festival".

DF Concerts booker Dave Corbet said: "We've always done our own thing, and we feel we've done well in bringing in a new audience to the Fringe, people who would not normally have associated themselves with it.

"We know from research we've carried out that some of these people are interested in going to other kinds of shows and making more of a day of it in Edinburgh, so this makes sense for us.

"Another reason for us doing this is the deadline to get into the Fringe programme is the end of April, and we've only managed to get about 25 of the shows we're putting on in there."

Underbelly director Ed Bartlam said: "We're pleased to welcome the Edge Festival to our little family. There's no doubt their audience is also our audience, and we hope that by including their excellent music programme in the brochure, we're making it even easier for festival-goers to find the shows that they want to see and, of course, to discover new ones."

Meanwhile, more details of this year's Fringe line-up have begun to emerge in advance of next week's official programme launch.

The Pleasance line-up will include veteran British actor Art Malik, who shot to fame in the 1980s with starring roles in The Jewel in the Crown, A Passage to India, True Lies and The Living Daylights. He will be appearing with his daughter Keira in the world premiere of play about a Middle-Eastern immigrant's struggle to bring up his English-born daughter.

Other highlights at the Pleasance are expected to include Camille O'Sullivan, comics Tim Vine, Rich Hall, Terry Alderton and Andrew Lawrence, and dance stars Flawless.

Underbelly's line-up will include the return of Neil and Christine Hamilton with their own chat show, comedian Richard Herring and Drags Aloud.

Phill Jupitus and Phil Nichol will both be part of Gilded Balloon's programme.